Leisure = Expensive

The only question Dr. Ian ever asked me that I didn't have an answer for was, "What do you do for leisure?" I stared at him blankly for a minute. "What's that?" I asked him. The look on his face was great. "I'm kidding," I had told him. "But the answer is still 'I don't know.'" I've never really had free time before. I don't quite know what to do with it. Half the time I feel like I wasting energy, and it doesn't do anything for me.

And I need to figure it out, because playing around with it cost me a bit.

El Hijo's sneakers curled up and died on him that morning, and he needed a new pair to make Tai Chi class the next night. That's right, he could totally kick your ass in a controlled and pacifist kind of way. So we headed out to the local consumer center that passes for a mall in this town. He went off in search of his shoes, and Dante and I poked around elsewhere, looking first to see if they had put in a new toy store to replace the Kay-bee Toy Store they took out. Nope.

On our trot back, I notice one of the jewelry stores is going out of business. I like taking the occasional lap through a jewelry store, but I usually never find anything I like. I have odd taste, I suppose. I'm also pretty specific. Most of my jewelry, what little there is of it, is symbolic in some way. I guess that's also a leftover symptom of growing up in a doomsday cult--the love of metaphor. I like amber. The last birthday present I bought for myself was a ring made out of recycled stuff. It was really neat. I have an Italian coin made in my birth year that came to me in a weird way that El Hijo had put in a bezel on a necklace, which I wear pretty much all of the time. I sleep in it. Well, except for the past few nights.

Everything in that jewelry store was incredibly expensive to start with, but it was down to 80% off on some things. I was almost ready to go when I spotted a necklace that I'd wanted since it came out. I don't normally buy diamonds. I don't even have an engagement ring. There's too much ethical stuff all bound up in diamonds for me. But this necklace, when I had first seen it, just hit me the right way. The stones are graduated, meaning they get bigger as the necklace goes on, and it curves in an "S" shape, and is supposed to stand for a journey and growing stronger with each passing year. So, yeah, it got me. The guy whipped out his calculator and told me the original price. That made me suck a breath in hard like a punch in the gut. Then he told me what it was with a discount. That was more like a sharp slap across the face, but with none of the nausea afterwards. I said thank you and turned and walked away.

I got about twelve feet away before I turned quite literally on my heel and marched back and slapped down my credit card. My ten year old son was laughing at me. All his life for unknown reasons, he's insisted that women want jewelry as the highest form of present, and because I wear very little of it, I've always been puzzled by that. I've even argued with him about it. Five years of serious argument on my part just went up in smoke with the smacking sound of that credit card on the counter. I'm sure that's what he was laughing at. He just said, "I'll meet you in the book store." Which is obviously where I'm headed next. He knows me too well. I bought the necklace as my combination graduation--new job victory--upcoming birthday--present. And I'm wearing it all the time because now I feel like I have to get my money's worth out of it. I am absolutely not buying another thing.

I really wanted the earings, but that would be like getting a black eye. I'm not buying anything else.

Not even that dress I saw in the store after I plunked down money for two more Dresden Files books (Book 3 & 4--seriously, where was I when these came out??). I resisted the dress even though I still very much want it and bought face stuff instead. I have rather expensive taste when it comes to face stuff. I don't know why. I don't even wear makeup 99% of the time. But I wear a very expensive face lotion. So after the sound of "da-da-da-DA-da-DAAA-CHARGE!" I walked out with another bag. And have spent a day or two since trying to decode what just happened.

I came to the conclusion that I need to get a hobby. Because I think part of the problem is that I don't have a real hobby. My hobby is aesthetics. I have interests that really just make more work for me in the long run--when I put food on a plate, for instance, ideally I care about what sort of plate it goes on, the colors involved in the food, the texture, and of course the drink that goes with it. I like cloth napkins at dinner. I like music. I like a certain lighting. Those things are just as important to me as the meal itself. No one else seems to care, which is probably a very good thing. They're just hungry. I won't even get into the displeasure I experience in not being able to order the food to come out of the oven in the way I want it to because I have no time--and I doubt my family would have the patience anyway. Same with cooking. I get just as big a charge out of breaking eggs into my grandmother's beautiful, old mixing bowls as I get from eating whatever comes as the result of that. Probably more than the eating part. I float around art museums. It's all I can do to keep from touching Van Gogh's stuff to see if it smears and be a part of it somehow. When I get into the art thing myself, I like the kinds of mediums that go directly onto your hands--charcoal is my favorite, followed by those little pastel sticks. The stuff that gets all over your hands while it gets on the paper. I don't like something that interferes with that experience, like paintbrushes. Van Gogh's art looks like he smeared it on with a butterknife (I looked as close as I could get without committing a felony--I'm pretty sure it's a butterknife). Thick layers of globby paint that turn into something else. That's another part of why I think I like things to have multiple meanings. The jewelry is pretty, but its meaning is layered. I get to know/experience all of that at once. It's quite a thrill. I like music that asserts a meaning without lyrics (like Amon Tobin's stuff) or lyrics that create lots of mental pictures (like John Lennon's stuff). I like things like breezes in my hair and I absolutely love rain for unkown reasons. It's just all the feelings it creates at once, I guess--sound, texture, sight, smell, all at once. I guess I'm a sensualist in a lot of ways. That's what I like about the face lotion. It feels incredible, it smells good, it lasts all day--I care less about what it actually does rather than how it makes me feel, and I pick my formula based on that.

There are really only two things I personally like doing: work and experience. I don't want to really do a lot else except feel. I like reading, but that also sets off a lot of other feelings--pictures, ideas, emotions. I like writing, but it's a very agonizing process for me. I actually have a whole short story collection that I need to go back to and edit. But I can see the picture so clearly in my head, it has to come out just right on the page or it's very frustrating. I actually need to go back through them for the sense details. Maybe that's where I'll start.

Maybe I just need to spend some time out in the sun and close my eyes.

I need something that doesn't cost so damned much.

-- Virgil